


You Left Its Liver Next to My Lunch

by theradiointukyshead



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3290117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theradiointukyshead/pseuds/theradiointukyshead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adventures in the life of Fitz and Simmons, grudging roommates and codependent dumb geniuses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Left Its Liver Next to My Lunch

i.

Honestly, Leo Fitz only had himself to blame.

Fitz – in his one of his addled-brain 2 a.m. ramblings – complained to Trip about the abysmal state of his hall bathroom shared by a dozen twenty-something dudes. Trip said his girlfriend’s friend was looking for a roommate, and the following afternoon Fitz woke up with a bad hangover and a signed lease. It wasn’t planned, this choice to go off-campus, but then again, bad life decisions rarely were.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he headdesked, wishing upon any shooting stars or asteroids, comets or meteors, that the clutter of class notes and design sketches on his desk would swallow him whole.

It wasn’t his own culinary skill or lack thereof that was the source of distress (he was perfectly capable of getting by with mac-and-cheese and frozen meals thank you very much), nor was it the commute hassle; years living overseas had taught him to put up with much worse.

No, if fending for himself was Hell, then it was his roommate that sat on the throne of flames with waggling tail and protruding horns.

Speaking of whom –

“Fitz, there are dirty dishes in the sink!” Jemma Simmons bellowed from the kitchen. He could practically see her flaring nostrils and her flushed cheeks.

_Those damn flushed cheeks_.

“I’m gonna do them soon,” he hollered.

“You’d better be. I don’t want the sink to have its own ecosystem.”

“You’re a biochemist. Shouldn’t you want something to experiment on? Really, I’m just doing you a favor.”

And so they fell into their regularly-scheduled bickering, so effortless it seemed almost graceful.

ii.

Let it be known, before we continue, that Fitz wasn’t a morning person.

Let it also be known that the walls of their apartment were as thick as the one-ply toilet paper he’d insisted on buying to cut costs despite Simmons’ persuasion and bargain and ultimately, plea.

So when he was woken up four days in a row after the toilet paper argument by her alarm, which, incidentally, was a god-awful Chinese pop song by some obscure artist named Chloe Wang, he decided he’d had enough.

“For God’s sake, it’s the crack of Satan’s ass! Turn it down!” He slammed on her door, and she answered with a smile. It was one of those Natalie Dormer smiles that could either mean she was willing to make him breakfast if he asked nicely, or she was ready to slit his throat with a stiletto heel. The hair on his neck stood on end.

“Uhm,” he gulped. “I mean, can you please be mindful of my hours?”

“It’s not my fault the walls are so  _thin_ ,” she protested, drawing out the last word, the smile still plastered on her face. Damn it, she knew she was winning.

He rubbed his bleary eyes; he really had no energy for all of this. “Alright, fine!” He groaned at last. “I’m sorry I’m such a cheapskate. Tomorrow we’ll hit up Costco and I’ll buy you a lifetime supply of four-ply toilet paper, okay? Just let me sleep in peace.”

The dim early morning light tangled into his hair and trickled down his heavy lids, lingering just a forlorn moment on the dark circles underneath his eyes. Her expression softened, “Fitz, how many hours of sleep did you get last night?”

“Three, I suppose, and four the night before that,” he scratched his stubble, blinking against the light. “I have a project due this afternoon, so I’ve been staying up late all week.”

They stared at each other in silence, and eventually he shuffled back to bed.

The next morning he woke up to his own alarm and hot coffee already in the pot. Underneath his mug was a post-it note with the words  _I’m sorry_  written neatly on top. The note came and went, but there was always a coffee pot waiting for him every morning after that.

iii.

Their grace period didn’t last for long, however, when he jumped into the shower one morning, half of his brain still in hibernation, only to be jolted awake by the equivalence of an ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

“Simmons!” He shrieked. He wrapped a towel around his waist and made a beeline for the kitchen, where she was munching on her cereal, blissfully oblivious.

“What?” She grunted, looking up. As soon as she laid eyes on his half-naked body, on the droplets dripping in a tantalizing dance downwards, she nearly spat on her milk. “Uhm, yes?” she gulped, in a fruitless effort to keep her eyes from wandering.

“You used up all the hot water!” He ran a hand through his unruly curls, frustrated. Water from his hair sprayed in every direction, like broken glass caught in just the right kind of light. And maybe in the right kind of light he was beautiful.

She bit her lips and looked away. “It won’t happen again, I promise,” she said, her expression unreadable.

Mistaking her impassiveness for defeat, he pressed on triumphantly, “and you clogged up the drain. Your hair is gorgeous on you, but I’m not so fond of it when it’s weaving a carpet in our shower.” 

_No wait, hang on._

_Shite._

“What I mean is that –” He waved his hand frantically, but words can’t be un-spoken.

Simmons grinned like a Cheshire cat. “You think I have gorgeous hair?”

“Well, yes,” he rubbed the back of his head. Every shade of red in the visible spectrum flitted across his face. Nonetheless, he would not succumb to her estrogen-fueled sorcery, so he added with a stern expression, “but that’s still no excuse for you to leave your hair in the drain. Please clean up after yourself next time.”

She mock-saluted him, “yes sir!”

“Good,” he nodded, and couldn’t fight back a smile.

iv.

Fitz considered himself to be a spiritual person, but he was in no way religious.

Right now though, he was praying to all the Gods who would listen for her not to come home.

The Gods let him go to voicemail.

Keys jangled, the door knob twisted, and Simmons stepped into their apartment to the most unmanly sight she’d ever laid eyes on: Fitz standing on the edge of the couch, pterodactyl-screeching, a thick textbook wedged under his arms.

“STAY BACK!” He shrieked in a voice that sounded like it belonged to a prepubescent boy. “THERE’S A GIANT-ASS SPIDER IN OUR LIVING ROOM AND IT’S NOWHERE TO BE SEEN.”

“Wha –”

“HANG ON I THINK IT’S OVER THERE. DON’T WORRY SIMMONS, I’M GONNA KILL IT.” He held up the book, about to hurl it at the offending creature, but she spotted it at the same time.

“No wait stop!” She jumped in front of him, and was one second away from being concussed by an engineering textbook.

“CHEESUS CRUST SIMMONS WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?”

He continued flailing in his squeaky voice reserved only for life-and-death emergencies and animals with more than four legs, but she held a finger to her lips, and he immediately shut up. Gingerly, she scooped up the spider that was crawling away from the commotion. It fitted neatly in the palm of her hand, wiggling its hairy scary legs like it was taunting him. The mere sight of it made Fitz want to set the whole apartment on fire.

Simmons, however, was unfazed. She was… cooing at it? “Fitz, this is my tarantula. He’s called Ood Sigma,” she said nonchalantly, like it was totally not weird for her to keep natural selection’s greatest mistake around as pets.

He hid behind his book, now acting as a shield between him and the tarantula, but could somehow muster up enough leftover testosterone to sound stern, “first of all, do not let that thing near me. In fact, do not let that thing so much as  _breathe_  the same air as me. Second of all –” he put the book down and grinned at her “– Ood Sigma?”

Her eyes lit up. “You watch Doctor Who too?”

They ended up marathoning all of Series One that weekend, the two of them in their sweatpants and oversized t-shirts, stuffing their faces with Ben & Jerry’s. It was an ungodly sight and they were a mess, but it was a beautiful mess, just the same.

v.

It was in the same sweatpants and t-shirt that he stood by the sidewalk, barefoot, toying with the idea for a second before deciding it had to be done. “Hi Simmons, it’s Fitz,” he pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed through the phone. “Our apartment’s on fire.”

An hour later, after the fire department and the police had declared there was no damage apart from the curtains, which were now on the floor in a mangled heap of ash and charred fabric, she turned to him and grated slowly, “how. the. hell. did. you. set. the. curtains. on. fire?”

He looked up guiltily, “I burned my toast.”

“You burned your  _toast_  and the  _curtains_  caught on fire?”

He huffed, and he had the audacity to feel indignant, “technically, I burned my toast because I tinkered with our toaster and accidentally took out a wrong part. The curtains, on the other hand, burned because I couldn’t figure out the setting on our stove to make a grilled cheese sandwich.” 

She heaved a long-suffering sigh, the kind she only whipped out to deal with her five-year-old cousin, “why did you tinker with the toaster?”

“Promise me you won’t laugh?”

She crossed her arms and looked at him.

Shuffling from foot to foot, he tugged at one ear and muttered sheepishly, “this morning you were running late for class because the toaster was so slow, so I thought I should make it faster.”

She laughed anyway, and pulled him into a tight hug. Her chin tucked into the crook of his neck, laughter reverberating from her chest into his like crisp sunlight. And sunlight always carried with it a certain allure he could never resist.

From that day on, they had breakfast together. Most times she cooked, but other times he would volunteer, provided that she put him under close supervision. She reasoned that the arrangement was to prevent another fire hazard, and he stifled a beam as he held a warm cup of coffee in both hands, looking at the girl across the table with even warmer heart.

vi.

Their little piece of morning domesticity was disrupted on one fine Saturday, when Fitz woke up to find a naked girl in the bathroom.

One high-pitched scream and an embarrassing conversation later, he learned that the girl was Skye, Simmons’ friend, who crashed at their place after one of those nights when you were thankful you got home with your phone and half of your dignity still intact.

He grumbled, glancing over his shoulder at the hungover girls moping around the kitchen table with their dead eyes and bleak expressions implying they would not hesitate to kill a man, as he flipped pancakes for the three of them. While Skye and Simmons concentrated on stabbing at their stacks and not themselves, Fitz unceremoniously dropped the pan in the sink, snickering to himself at their collective hiss. Someone threw an empty milk carton at his head. It was totally worth it though.

An hour later, Trip showed up. Fitz thought it was to drag him away from his work, but it turned out that Trip was actually Skye’s boyfriend.

Cue the awkward double-date-where-only-two-were-actually-dating-and-the-other-two-were-together-for-convenience’s-sake.

“I can’t stand this place,” Simmons groaned as soon as Trip and Skye – rendered more confident (or less dignified) after a few drinks – hit the dance floor. “One more cocktail and an awful techno song and I might just snap.”

“Funny,” Fitz teased. “I don’t recall you saying that when you stumbled home drunk out of your mind last night.”

“I –” Her mouth opened and closed. Whatever was bothering her, she decided it had drowned in last night’s alcohol and should not resurface. The light in the nightclub blinked to a horrible beat. For a brief and painful second, he caught melancholy before it fled her features along with shadows from the flashing light.

He downed the rest of his martini and leaned in closer to her, “wanna bail? I know just the place to get some decent, un-Americanized fish and chips.”

“Of course,” she gave him a grateful smile. It didn’t fade in the red-blue feeble light, and he made a note to hold on to it for the rest of their evening.

vii.

They got home at one in the morning, but when he woke up around three to use the bathroom, the light in her room was still on, and faint music was thumping inside. That was normal; he knew she always put her music on when she shuffled around cleaning her room. The dead silence weaving itself into each note, however, was not.

He stood by her door, his head tilted, befuddled and deliberative. “Simmons?” he called tentatively.

“Not now, Fitz,” came a quivering voice.

He came in anyway, because they said those awake at this hour were the loved and the lonely, and if she was not drifting from dream to dream he would never want her to be the latter. She would never have to cry on her own.

“Ed Sheeran? Really?” he slapped on a smile as he commented on the album that was now playing, crouching down to her eye level. “Bit corny, don’t you think?”

She sniffed and wiped a few tears away, her eyes an aching shade of red. “I told you to go away,” she croaked.

He nodded. He bounced to his feet and left.

There was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in his hand when he returned.

“There, your favorite” he pressed the pint against her cheek and held out a spoon. “But you have to share.”

They passed the pint back and forth while he chattered on mindlessly about work and life. She let him stay and listened to his babble, but silent tears still trickled down her face, and the ice-cream on his tongue suddenly burned like acid.

“Do you wanna tell me what’s wrong?” he asked at last, unable to let her suffer alone any longer.

She just shook her head.

Frustration with his own uselessness, coupled with the fact that he was more or less a bit sleep-deprived, made him act on impulse and dip his hand into their pint. She raised an eyebrow, and had she been her usual self she would have launched into a lecture on food sanitation and all that, but he just grinned madly, wiping ice-cream on the tip of his nose.

“I bet I can lick it off,” he declared. “If I can’t, I’ll do the dishes for a week. Scout’s honor.”

“You were not a scout,” she called him out, the corners of her lips twitching a little. He simply stuck his tongue out at her.

For the next three very ridiculous minutes, he struggled in vain to lick his nose, pulling faces varying from agony to intense concentration to downright tardive dyskinesia, while Ed Sheeran and his graceful ballads played in the background. Soon she was on the floor wheezing, the tears on her cheeks long dried and forgotten, her hair a mess and her makeup smeared.

_By god she looked so beautiful._

He watched her with his tongue still stuck out like a lizard, in the early morning hours when everything felt like it was just him and her holding the rest of this sleeping world in their palms, and contentment settled into his lungs as easily as the air he breathed. He couldn’t promise he would never make her cry, but for as long as she would have him, he would always try to make her smile.   


End file.
